God’s Blessings Grow

I’ll get back to all these verses in a minute.

If there is anything I have learned during Brent’s career transition, it has been to pray at all times and to be specific with my requests. There have been multiple opportunities to doubt. I know that I doubt, so I can only imagine how much more Brent doubts. I learned early on, the hard way, that if I don’t cover my day in prayer I am a very discouraging, questioning wife. And a husband who has had a bad day doesn’t want to come home to a wife who’s words and attitude aren’t uplifting. So I decided a few weeks back that, by the grace and power of God, I am going to have encouraging and uplifting words to say, even on the crappiest of days. I choose to trust everyday that today has happened the way God planned for it to happen.

And it’s a good thing that God already changed my attitude because I had a husband that came home for lunch today that was very discouraged and doubtful. Any amount of being positive and uplifting just wasn’t changing a thing.

I’m trying to be a praying wife and mother. I can’t go out and help Brent sell insurance but I can get on my knees before the Lord. After he went back to work and Lily was down for a nap, I got out my Bible. About 2 weeks ago, I began reading through Philippians for no reason other than I just wanted to. I was asked by a friend why I picked Philippians and I didn’t have an answer. I do now. Just so happens that the section I read today was in chapter 4, mainly verses 4-20. I know that God led me to begin reading Philippians two weeks ago so that today I would be encouraged by Paul’s words. I read the commentaries and the related verses for chapter 4 and it was so obvious that God was telling me that He supplies all needs for those who are in Christ Jesus.

I know that. I’ve known that for most of my life. God supplies our every need. So why in the world do I allow doubt and fear to creep into my mind?

And a question that’s burning in my heart today is why why why do I read His word and think God would do differently than what his word promises?

So this is what I did…Philippians 4 tells me to make my requests known to God. Not because He doesn’t already know my requests. I do this so that the peace of God which transcends understanding will guard my heart and mind. So I made 3 simple requests.
1.  For Brent and I to commit our work to the Lord and seek to glorify Him.
2.  For the salvation of Lily, for her to be like Jesus, and to not be influenced by the world.
3.  For Brent to “career” by July 19th.

Now I hope #1 and #2 make complete sense to you. Let me explain #3–when I say “career” I am speaking of the next level of training. He has to write a certain number of policies before he can career and they have to be written within a 4 month period, otherwise his written policies that are outside of the 4 month period no longer count toward his number of needed policies to career. Got it? Great. I knew you’d catch on quickly.

Brent had an appointment this afternoon at 4 that he knew would be a waste of his time because the quote he was presenting was too high.

At 5:20 (when Lily and I woke up from our 3 hour nap…woah!) Brent still wasn’t home from his appointment. I knew one of two things was possible: the meeting was going surprisingly well, or the man he met with was a creep and was holding Brent hostage. Hoping that the first one was reality, I didn’t call for fear of interrupting.

At 5:30 he finally called to tell me that the meeting went well and the guy is going to let Brent write his home and auto policies. Waste of time? I think not 🙂 I was ecstatic with that news. But he had more to tell me. While he was at that appointment another lady called who wants him to quote her home, 4 autos, and 2 life insurance policies. I WAS FLOORED!!! Praise be to God who is able to do abundantly more than we ask of him!

Brent said before he left his office he spent a few minutes repenting of is doubt and bad attitude and thanked God from a humble heart that He is good to us when we least deserve it. Brent said that if the tables were turned and he was the one in control he would have said to himself, “Come back when you think I can actually do something.” Thankfully God doesn’t say that to us. In the midst of our doubt, God showed up big time. Did we deserve it? No! Do we ever deserve it, even on our best days? No. But He loves us and desires to be good to us.

Tonight we had our bedtime Bible story with Lily. We read from the Big Picture Story Bible. The title was “God’s Blessings Grow” and the first sentence said, “David was amazed at how good God was.”

I think that sums up the day, and any day for that matter…God’s blessings grow and we are amazed at how good God is.